Steerable antennas dynamically steer their radiation patterns, whereas beamforming antennas adaptively adjust their shape. Traditionally, beam steering may be implemented via mechanical or non-mechanical means. However, mechanical beam steering systems may be slow, have a narrow steering width, be expensive to produce, and function in an unreliable manner. Moreover, traditional non-mechanical beam steering solutions may use microelectromechanical (MEMS) mirrors that produce a narrow field of emission.
Conventional beamforming systems may use phased arrays and reflectarrays to provide beam forming with phase shifters that are realized via electronically-controllable components such as MEMS switches, varactor diodes, p-i-n diodes, or liquid crystal elements. Although such non-mechanical beamforming systems may perform faster than their mechanical counterparts, such systems still suffer from drawbacks such as high manufacturing costs and limited communication bandwidth, and are much too slow for high bandwidth applications and/or when one (or both) of the transmitter and receiver are moving relative to one another.
The exemplary aspects of the present disclosure will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. The drawing in which an element first appears is typically indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.